This time last year, after a promising start, events conspired to put gardening and harvesting somewhat on the backburner.
This year, events have conspired to have the opposite effect. Not just for extra lockdown projects like the greenhouse and fruit cage, but to have beautifully weeded, prepared and planted out in the veg beds for once too.
So with everything looking unusually spick and span it’s been great to celebrate with the first of the harvests to come, starting as always with broad beans and our favourite broad bean pesto with plenty of early lettuce for an accompanying salad.
Closely followed by lifting the onions and garlic.
Regular readers will know we always over-winter these, so our harvest is usually a few weeks ahead of spring growers.
The onions are a bit misshapen this year, but these hardy survivors have had to battle the wettest winter ever, followed by the hottest, driest spring ever, driven by climate change, so they have done well to still be with us at all.
But it’s not all been rosy on the veg patch. Our shallots struggled and have succumbed to the dreaded fungus, Onion White Rot.
It’s the first time in our rotation plan that we have grown onions in this area, so it might have been there all along, but now we know, this patch will have to be permanently out of bounds for any alliums, and we’ll have to be mindful not to spread contaminated soil when using this area for other unaffected crops.
The Secret Acre 
Sorry to hear about your onions.
Do you normally harvest garlic now. It’s the first year for our garlic and we were told to wait till July before harvesting.
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Yes, we normally harvest the garlic mid-June. But we are in the south, and we over-winter, so they were planted in November. If you are further north and/or spring plant then you are likely to be a few weeks later, which would take you into July. But the stems of these ones of ours had already turned brown and wilting which is when we usually harvest. That said we too still have another standard variety in the ground to harvest next week. as they were still looking quite green and I wanted to give them this weeks rain (after it had been so dry) in case that helps the bulbs swell further. Also we still have elephant garlic growing strongly in the ground as this harvests later too.
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Thanks Paul. We planted in October and are based in the West Midlands. We’ve never grown garlic before so not entirely sure how much the leaves need to wilt and brown. All part of the learning for first time veg patch growers: https://myhomefarm.co.uk/planting-growing-and-harvesting
Do we have a ‘window’ for the garlic before it gets too ripe?
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So you should be harvesting soon then. It will be obvious really when their green stems start to turn. Yellowing foliage is a sign that bulbs are reaching maturity. Some people pick straight away, we tend to leave ours to wilt back a bit more, probably a bit too long really. But you can always lift one first to see how they are looking. As long as it’s not wet they shouldn’t rot, but don’t wait too long. Like onions you lift them and dry them in the sun before storing, either in the greenhouse or a sunny window. I usuallly give them a couple of weeks before reaquinting myself on YouTube with a plaiting video then make a totlal mess of them and end up tying the bunches together with string, but it’s fun trying! Looks like you are on a similar journey to us, so I look foreard to reading more about it on your blog too.
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I cannot wait to pick our garlic. We eat garlic daily, and we want to definitely dry and cure ours. My wife has great skills when it comes to tying stuff, so I have great faith in her plaiting abilities.
We are on similar journeys and I enjoy seeing what others are doing. Glad to have come across your blog.
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